May 17 marked the 66th anniversary of the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision, Brown v. the Board of Education.
When Chief Justice Warren issued the unanimous opinion of the court in Brown, he wrote that “… in the field of public education the doctrine of separate but equal has no place,” as segregated schools are “inherently unequal.”
In the 2013 Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder, the court, by a 5-4 vote (with five right-wing justices in the majority), gutted the Voting Rights Act.
The scandalous decision by Chief Justice John Roberts overturned the re-authorization of the Act by Congress, arguing that the country “has changed” and that racial discrimination in voting was no longer a problem in the South.
The Brown decision reminds us that the Supreme Court can be and ought to be a force for equality.
